Gilad Shalit

Re "In Gaza, fear in the dark," Opinion, July 6 Where is Mona Elfarra's frustration with Hamas, her government, which refuses to even recognize Israel's right to exist? Hamas wants an Islamic state in Palestine, a state that would not tolerate the secularism which many Palestinians have enjoyed in the past. As for Gaza's poverty and high density, surely a physician like Elfarra knows about the high Palestinian birthrate. As for the Israeli atrocities, when will the Palestinians recognize that Israel is much too powerful to engage militarily?

For Karnit Goldwasser, the hardest part is "to go to sleep alone and to wake up alone." Goldwasser went from student to international figure after her husband, Ehud, and another Israeli soldier, Eldad Regev, were captured by Hezbollah fighters July 12 while on patrol near the Lebanese border. "On July 12, my life was over. I woke up as an ordinary person, but since that day I wake up with the same goal.... My own war is to bring my husband back home," she said.

There are reports of a deal to exchange hundreds of Palestinian prisoners for captured Israeli Sgt. Gilad Shalit. This is welcome news because the Islamic militant group Hamas has held the 23-year-old soldier as a human pawn, virtually incommunicado, since his capture on the Gaza Strip border in June 2006. Shalit's release would be a political boon for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of a country with obligatory military service and that identifies with the soldier's plight and his family's pain.

It was a rough night at the GOP debate in Las Vegas for Herman Cain -- and after the debate it got rougher still. Cain was asked about remarks he made earlier in the day during a CNN interview about whether he would consider a prisoner exchange involving suspected terrorists jailed at the naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and an American soldier, similar to the deal that freed Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit along with more than 1,000 Palestinians....

Supporters of Israel rallied in front of the country's consulate in Los Angeles on Sunday as the Jewish state continued to defend itself against an international outcry over a deadly raid on a pro-Palestinian aid flotilla bound for the Gaza Strip last week. "Today we call all the world to wake up," said Israeli Consul General Jacob Dayan, who addressed the cheering crowd while wrapped in his national flag. "Those who led the flotilla were not peace activists. Those who tried to murder our soldiers were not freedom fighters."

RAMALLAH, West Bank - - Amid increasingly volatile protests around the West Bank, Palestinian and international leaders are pressuring Israel to release four Palestinian prisoners who have been on hunger strikes for several months in protest against their detention. Advocates for the men expressed concern for their lives and Palestinian Authority officials warned of greater unrest if any of them were to die in custody. Israel has insisted that the four prisoners are not in imminent danger and were legitimately arrested for either violating the terms of their release in a 2011 prisoner swap for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit or for plotting acts against Israel.

Israel and Egypt announced a prisoner swap Monday that will free American Israeli citizen Ilan Grapel, who was arrested four months ago in Cairo on suspicion of spying for Israel and inciting antigovernment unrest. The New York-born Grapel, who became an Israeli citizen in 2005, will be exchanged for 25 Egyptians being held in Israeli jails, according to a statement from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Israeli officials, as well as Grapel's friends and family, denied that the 27-year-old worked for Israel's Mossad intelligence agency.

JERUSALEM -- Retaliating for a recent barrage of rockets fired by Gaza Strip fighters, Israel on Wednesday killed a senior Hamas military commander as he traveled by car through Gaza City, the militant group said. Ahmed Jabari, the 52-year-old head of the Hamas military wing, and three other people in the vehicle were killed in the airstrike. Shortly after, Israeli forces also struck other targets in the seaside enclave. The attack marked the launch of a new Israeli military assault, dubbed Operation Pillar of Defense, aimed at “defending the people of Israel who have been under rocket attack and crippling terrorist organizations' capabilities,” said Israel Defense Forces spokesman Lt. Col. Avital Leibovitz.

Israeli tanks pulled out of the Gaza Strip early Friday morning, ending an incursion that began Wednesday and left 30 Palestinians dead and a trail of damaged homes, crushed cars and uprooted trees. On the eastern edges of Gaza City's Shaaf district, deep trenches of churned earth surrounded by newly pockmarked buildings clearly showed the path taken by an estimated 50 Israeli tanks and armored bulldozers.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told a Los Angeles audience Tuesday night that it would be "an unbearable sin to future generations" if Iran is not stopped from developing nuclear weapons. "We cannot tolerate, we will not tolerate, those who challenge Israel's right to exist while actively seeking to develop the catastrophic weapons to fulfill their goals," Olmert said, referring to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's comment in October 2005 that Israel should be "wiped off the map."